Tonight, as we consider God's kingly rights over us, let's turn to Psalm 95 for our scripture reading. Psalm 95. Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving, and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hands are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow and worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massa in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. For 40 years I was angry with that generation. I said, they are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways. So I declared on an oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. That's for the reading of God's word. As we start, let me go back and read verses 1 and 2 from our psalm. So we have that fresh in our mind. It reads, Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. When we read these verses, these first two verses this morning, there's nothing really that strikes us as unusual. It's pretty much what we expected when we come to church on a Sunday evening. You know, it fits our normal pattern. Maybe Saturday, it's our day off. We sleep in a little bit, mow the lawn. For lunch, we might have macaroni and cheese, go to bed. Sunday morning, we get up, we put on our nicer clothes, we come to service, and we hear these words read. And we think, well, yes, this is just normal. It's par for the course what I expected. There's nothing in these words that makes us stop and think, can I really do this? But when the Psalter was put together and the Israelites who had the Psalter put together at that time, when they read these words, undoubtedly there was some of the Israelites that stopped and said, can I really do this? Can I really sing for joy to the Lord? Can I shout aloud to the rock of my salvation? And the reason for this is that there was a unique context, a unique situation that caused these words to be a tremendous challenge for them. And that context was one of suffering. That situation was one of suffering. It's shown by the setting of this psalm in relation to the entire Psalter. The Psalter is a book just like any other book. It has a flow of thought and a progression and a development. As you know, probably remember, there's five books in the Psalms. And the way those five books progress is Psalm book one and two talks about the reign of God through his messianic king. In Book 1, David. In Book 2, the transference of that kingship and that messianic kingship to Solomon. But in Book 3, there's a radical shift in tone. In Book 3, the monarchy is gone. There is no monarchy left. There is no messianic king on the throne. There's suffering and trial. And in book 4, the Psalms start to remind Israel that there is hope because there was a king before David. It takes them back to Moses and reminds them that before then, they had a king, Yahweh, who was their king before David and who would be their king after David. And it's in Book 4 that our psalm is found. That context of suffering and the call to remember God's kingship. And this context is also seen right in the psalms that immediately surround Psalm 95. Psalm 93 through Psalm 100 form a set of enthronement psalms calling people to worship Yahweh as their king. And Psalm 93 and 94, in a sense, form the introduction to this set of psalms, this sermon you might call it. And Psalm 95, our psalm, 3100 is the body, the content. And you can see that even from, if you look at your scriptures, just the way our psalm starts, starts with an exhortation. Come, let us sing. And you see 96, that's the same thing. An exhortation, sing to the Lord. Psalm 97. The Lord reigns. Let the earth be glad. 98. Sing to the Lord a new song. Psalm 100. Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. But then when you look at Psalm 93, there's no call to worship. It just, as we sing it, you notice, it just states the fact God reigns. The Lord reigns. He's robed in majesty. And Psalm 94, right after that, the other psalm in this introductory section, talks about the suffering of this time without a Messianic king. It talks about the difficulty and the trouble that they were going through. So let me take you to, not only to Psalm 94, but I want to back up to Psalm 89. And look at that, and look at Psalm 94 to catch the idea of this context of suffering, to see the situation of the psalm. Look at Psalm 89, verse 32. God says, I will punish their sin with the rod, their iniquity with flogging. This is Israel, God's special people. They're covenant, his covenant people. And here he's bringing upon them the curses of breaking the old Mosaic covenant. Look further at verse 39. Israel responds at verse 39. They say, you have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled his crown in the dust. They're responding and saying, there is no more Messianic King. What has happened? What happened to the promise and the hopes we had in the covenant? Everything seems to be turned upside down now. There is no crown. There is no Messianic King. It seems you've revoked your covenant with David, with us. And look at verse 49. O Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? And you can hear in that the longing and the sorrow, the desperation of their situation. Turn over also to Psalm 94 and look at verses 5 and 6. They say, Israel complains, they crush your people, O Lord. They oppress your inheritance. They slay the widow and the alien. They murder the fatherless. The situation that they were in without a monarch was such that they were subject to other kings and other enemies around them, oppressing them, even to the point that the strong could no longer defend the widow. They could no longer defend the weak in Israel. That's the extent of the sorrow and the suffering. And that the wicked had such an upper hand on them, if you look in verse 3, that they were even jubilant. It says, how long will the wicked, O Lord, how long will the wicked be jubilant? That the wicked are so successful against God's people that they're reveling in it. They're jubilant about it. And if you look at verse 7, they quote the wicked as saying, Yahweh does not see. The God of Jacob does not see. Which is another way of saying, there is no God of Jacob. He does not reign. He's not the king over all creation. He's not sitting on his throne in heaven looking down and seeing this. We are the true kings, say the wicked. We rule the land, not Yahweh. And it's in light of such suffering and this context that this call comes to rejoice, to sing before the Lord, to shout to him as the rock of the salvation. And we see that in light of such apparent hopelessness and suffering that these calls to rejoice, to shout, to worship God are actually calls to exercise the fullest form of faith amidst the bleakest circumstances. The desperate circumstances actually make these calls to worship all that much more serious. Because Israel can either choose to believe their circumstances, which would say there is no king in Israel, Yahweh does not reign, or they can choose to believe that God does reign. They can choose to respond in faith. And we start to see that the desperate circumstances that makes these calls to rejoice actually calls to choose life over death. To choose life and following God to be God's people versus death and cursing. It is a choice between blessing and cursing being placed in front of us, which is the idea of the entire Psalter is that we're called under God's covenant kingship into his blessedness. And so, this importance, the seriousness of the situation is even shown by, if you look at the second half of the psalm as we read it, or if you reflect on it, you remember there's this stern warning section. And now we understand why this psalm not only calls us to rejoice and to faith in all the things we would expect, but it does something we wouldn't expect. It threatens very severely. And we realize now why it threatens. It threatens because this is a choice between life and death. Because to not respond by rejoicing, by worship, is to choose death. It's to choose cursedness. So with this in mind, let's go back and start off reading verses 1 through 3. Let's start off here. they say, Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. We are called to shout to God in the end of verse 1, to shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. And this idea, this word for shouting here was the shout of a soldier in a battle when he knew his victory was sure. It is the shout of a victory that we're called to. And we see that in these circumstances that this is in a sense is even shows further that this is almost on a natural level for Israel is almost insanity. Their natural circumstances would tell them, why shout? You're overrun. Your victory is not sure. But they are called to shout because it is to the rock of their salvation. It is to the foundation of their hope as Yahweh was their rock described in Deuteronomy 32. And so we here today are to respond to God in faith and to come to Him responding in wholehearted, full faith. And so far, I have used the idea of faith so far, But I want to make sure that I clearly distinguish that from our understanding of faith as it is seen, you know, in the church at large today. Because what the psalmist is calling for is much more than what the church today thinks of his faith. The psalmist is calling for wholehearted submission to God. He's calling for us to say in response, you are my God. I will faithfully submit, honor, obey, and follow you. I will trust you implicitly. But it is even more than that. It is more than submission because we see that we're called to rejoice, to sing, to shout before God. It is more than submission. It is also worship. And we are to take this submission, this obedience to God, And to realize that this submission to his kingship actually is a great benefit for us. That this is a tremendous opportunity for us. That his kingship indeed is the most wonderful opportunity. That his kingship is the best thing that could ever happen to us. And that is what we're being called to see in this psalm. To say from our heart, not only do I submit to you, Lord, but I do so in worship. that your kingship is indeed the best thing that could ever happen to me. And this can be seen further, that the reason for this response is because he is indeed the great king over all the earth. Look at this in verse 3 through 5. For the Lord is the great God, the great king above all gods. In his hands are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. These verses tell us that Yahweh is the ultimate in all realms of existence. No god is his peer. No king or earthly power is his equal. No element of nature, no matter how grand, is equal to him. He is the king over all gods, over all authorities, over all nature. The idea here when you see that it talks about the depths of the earth belonging to him, the idea of, you know, if you have ever looked out onto the ocean and just have pondered that you cannot, you just see water. As far as you can see, you just see water stretching out. And you think about the depths of the ocean. Or even my children have been studying the Titanic and it's sinking in this book. And you think about how deep the ocean goes and how mysterious this is for us. Or if you've ever been in front of a mountain and you've stood there and looked at this mountain and just seen how great and how mighty it is in that it is so much larger than us. And God is trying to give us a picture that these things are so small compared to his kingly authority, his kingly power. Or we might think today when we talk about the depths of the earth and that it's trying to bring out this idea of the mystery, that which the Israelites couldn't quite grasp or fathom. It was too large. They saw this as a bit of a mystery. For us, that would be, in a sense, space. When we think about the depths of the outreaches of space and how many billions of stars there are and the galaxies and how far that reaches that we can't even really know where the limit is and that he is the one over all of that, for he made it. And this is particularly important because of Israel's circumstances. Because they are without a king, you remember. They are without a monarch. They are subject to other kings. And they have these circumstances that would tell them, these suffering, these things they're going through that would tell them, no, there is no king in Israel. There is no king that reigns. And for us today, we go through similar situations. In our circumstances, we face, because of the sinfulness of this world, circumstances that would speak to us and speak to us in line of the way the wicked did in Psalm 94 where they say, Yahweh does not see. The God of Jacob, he's not there. He does not see. And when we think about Christianity, we are not called into a religion that promises us ease of life. It does not make us immune from those trials of sickness, from the trials of even death, from the trials of suffering of all types, whether it be financial or emotional. It does not free us from the sinfulness of our own bodies. It does not free us from issues that there is no such thing as a Christian divorce. But in our circumstances where we, too, face things, as Israel did, that makes it appear that our lives are not really under the kingship of God, but we look and we think that these circumstances seem to suggest to us that our lives are under the kingship of the circumstances around us or the people around us. And they say to us, there is no king in Israel. These verses tell us and remind us to see by faith that indeed there is a king who's over every power and every situation, who is sovereign over every suffering, over every heartache. He indeed rules and reigns and does so for our good. And we, in fact, have even more hope than Israel did when this psalm was first read. For we do not just have a king, a great king, who brings out our faith, but we have the great king who is Jesus, who became the great king incarnate. If I look at, think about what John says in John chapter 1 as he's introducing Jesus. And he says that through him, through Christ, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. And he also says the world was, he was in the world and the world was made through him. And we tie that back to verse 4 and 5, that in his hands are the depths of the earth and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his. Why? Because he made it. And his hands formed the dry land and we realize that Jesus Christ indeed is the great king overall who we're to respond in faith to no matter what our circumstances. And that his great king has come down, has come and become incarnate for us. At the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, we think about what the angel said when Matthew is introducing Jesus in his gospel and the message of the angel to Joseph is that they will call him Emmanuel, meaning God with us. And that this is what defines who Jesus is. It is God, the great king, coming down to us who suffer. Further, a few chapters later, when Matthew introduces the message of Jesus, he introduces and summarizes Jesus' message as being preaching of the gospel of the kingdom. And you remember those famous words that Jesus says, repent for the gospel of the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God is near. And what Jesus is saying is, the kingdom is near, because the great king is in your midst. He is saying, I am the great king. I've come down, I'm in your midst, and I'm bringing the kingdom. And this is our hope, is not only that we have this great king overall in every situation, but that this great king became man on our behalf. And why did he become man? Colossians 1 tells us in verse 13, when it says that he has rescued us, from the dominion of darkness, from the kingdom of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of the Son in which he loves. He came down and became man so that he would bring us into the kingdom of the Son whom he loved, so that we would become and be made his people, that we would be his possession. And that's actually the next movement of our psalm. If you look at verse 6 and 7 with me, we see that we're called to worship again because He's made us His people. It says, Come, let us bow down and worship. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care. This is the heart of this psalm. This psalm turns on these two verses For the foundation of our faith is not just that Jesus is the great king overall, but it is that he has brought us into a relationship with this great king. The foundation for our faith is our relation to this great king, that he indeed, as verse 6 says, is the Lord, our maker. We think of our maker, when we think of 1 Peter, that we, 1 Peter talks about this when he says that we, who are not a people, he is made into the people of God. And further, Matthew, back in the beginning of Matthew, when the angel again was introducing Jesus and telling Joseph of this one to be born, he tells Joseph that you shall name him Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. He shall redeem us and make us His own special people. Christ indeed is the high priest of Hebrews 4 who purges us of our sins, takes away our failings, our constant rebellion, and makes us clean that we are now pure to be set before God the Father. As his people. And so in verse 7, it shows that we are made into the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. And verse 7 not only shows this idea that we're brought and made into a people, a people special for God. But that God has indeed, through Christ, pledged to take care of us, to shepherd us, to oversee us. And that the one who exercises the shepherding care of the psalm is Jesus himself. Just as Matthew again in the beginning talks about, he says, he prophesies, excuse me, references a prophecy saying, Out of you, O Bethlehem, shall come a ruler, a king, who will shepherd my people Israel. And there it is, both parts. He's the king who will shepherd his people. The point of Jesus' shepherding is brought out. The ultimate goal of his shepherding is brought out in Revelation 7, verse 17. When it talks about the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd. And he will lead them to the springs of living water. And the idea there is that Jesus is the one that in his shepherding care is not only taking care of us, but he's leading us to the springs of living water, which is nothing less than the life and blessedness which God has in himself. That he is leading us back to the blessedness which God had promised to Adam. And Adam forfeited when he rebelled and disobeyed. And which since that time man has continued to rebel and refused to have. But Christ came down to be man. To make us his people. To shepherd us and watch over us. And to lead us back to the life and blessedness of God himself that he holds out for us. And this is not just the hope of Psalm 95. This is the hope of all of scripture. This in fact is the hope of, if you would turn to Genesis 15 with me. Genesis 15 verse 1. And see, this is the hope of the covenant of Abraham in which we've come into. In Genesis 15, verse 1, it says, After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward. Notice what the hope and the promise is. God says, I am your shield. I am your great reward. God does not promise something to Abraham. He does not promise some item to him. He promises himself. And what is promised is that he would be Abram's great reward. That he himself, his life, his blessedness would be bestowed and endowed upon Abram. That he could participate and share in the actual life of God. And that this indeed is our hope. But these terms of reward and shield have other implications for us today too. For reward also would have the implication of provision. That indeed God is the one who provides for us today. It is God the great king who is our great reward. He is the one who provides for us. And he is our shield. He is the one who protects us and watches over us. It is this promise that God indeed would be the one to be our king and to shepherd us, to make us his people and to watch over us. That is the hope of this psalm. And in this lies the gospel. Herein is the hope for sinners. For Israel was a sinful people. And they, in the context of this suffering, were actually experiencing the suffering of breaking the old Mosaic covenant. They rebelled against God again and again and again. And yet, God comes in the gospel offering a hope that is sure and stable, that does not depend upon their sinfulness, but He offers a hope that depends solely upon the shepherd, solely upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And it is a hope outside of Israel. And thus, if the sinful ones of Israel have hope we here too as the sinful ones have hope we too have hope that is outside of ourselves for it is not we who make ourselves the people of God but it is Christ the great king the king over all the world who has come down and has made us his own people as John says the good shepherd does what? He lays down his life for the sheep to make us his own special people. And as a result, he walks with us and shepherds us and cares for us and brings us home to glory. This is a hope outside of ourselves. And as a result, we can turn no matter what our circumstances, no matter what our trials, even as your trials, I'm sure for some people have trials that I can't understand. And as I talk to you about God's word today, I can't say I understand your life in total. I understand sin. I understand suffering. But some suffering is worse than others and no matter what the extent of our suffering it is whether it be minor or something beyond even worse this is the hope that we have that indeed though our suffering would tell us there is no king though our suffering or our situation might tell us that there is no hope the scriptures are clear and they come to us declaring the hope of the gospel that there is indeed a king over all. He is the King Jesus who owns the skies, who owns the mountains, who owns the seas for he made them. He is the one that came down from his glory to make us his own special people. He is the one that laid down his life who suffered on our behalf to make us right with God and to bring us back into the favor and communion of God. And in light of this hope, we can now come and worship God. We can come and sing for joy to the Lord. We can shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Not only can we do these things, we must do these things. We must turn to God and worship Him. We must submit and say, I will faithfully obey and follow and submit to you. More than that, I will worship you. I will say to you that, Father, though my circumstances would tell me different, your kingship is by far the best thing that could ever happen to me. It indeed is my hope, my life, my salvation. And not only must we do these things because he is the great king and because he's the great king who has shepherds us and has put us into a relation with himself. But we must do these things because if we don't, we will be judged. If we don't, we will suffer the curses of breaking the covenant, of rebelling against the great king who rules over all the earth and has ownership of every man, woman, and child. And we think about it in the Old Testament, Where do we see this judgment coming upon ones who had the covenant privilege like we do and yet rebelled against that covenant privilege? And immediately, I think of Israel in the wilderness. You probably could actually think of almost anything in the Old Testament because 80% of it seems to be them rebelling against the covenant. But anyways. And I think of Israel in the wilderness. And Israel in the wilderness was, think about their situation. In the wilderness, we realize that that was a difficult circumstance. It was a time of testing and trial for them. I mean, they were in a wilderness. And they had to rely upon God by faith. But think about what they saw. Think about their story. I mean, they're in Egypt. And what did they see in Egypt? They saw the ten plagues. They saw plague after plague coming. They even saw a plague that wiped out the firstborn of all of the Egyptians and that power. Then after that, they leave Egypt and they come up to the Red Sea and they see the water split in front of them. They walk through and then they see the waters engulf the Egyptians. And the Bible says that they saw the dead soldiers on the shore, washed up on the shore. After seeing this, they come and then they have the manna. They see the manna and they take of that. They have the cloud, God's spirit with them in the cloud. And all these things testified to them of God's kingship and shepherding care. The path of blessedness, the path of blessing was placed before them. But also in their circumstances, in the wilderness, the path of cursing was put before them as well. And as you know, and let me read their response or the evaluation of their response. As you know, they did not choose the path of blessing. They chose the path of cursing, though they were God's people, though they had covenant privilege, just as we do today. Exodus 17, verse 7 says, And he called the place Massa and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? Is the Lord among us or not? They were doubting God's kingship. They were doubting God's presence among them. They chose the path of cursing. And Israel in our psalm is in a situation parallel to that of that generation in the wilderness. Read with me, picking up at the end of verse 7 through the end of the psalm. And it says, the psalmist is charging the congregation saying, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massa in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. For 40 years, I was angry with that generation. I said, they are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways. So I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. The path of blessing and cursing was put before Israel in the Psalter again. And Hebrews, as you know, or might know that Hebrews quotes this last portion of our psalm in chapter 3 of Hebrews, quotes this portion, and then expounds upon it in the rest of chapter 3 and on into chapter 4, using it in light of the same purpose of Psalm 95 as a call to faith in the midst of difficult circumstances that the Hebrew Christians were suffering for the gospel. And it calls them to faith in their great king, Jesus, who is the high priest that has gone before them. But it does so also with the same warning, the same threat, that those that do not respond in faith to the great king, those who say, I'm sorry, my situation would tell me differently. I can't go that way. I can't rejoice in the Lord. that for those who would reject his kingship, that that same threat of cursing and of being eternally put out of the covenant and separated from the rest, the blessedness that was promised, the life, the fountain of waters that the Lamb leads them to, being separated from that is the result. And today, in the preaching of word, the same two paths are put before us as a congregation that you have before you the path of life and the path of death. You have before you the path of blessedness and the path of cursing. You have the path that would say, God indeed is my king. I will worship him. I respond to him and say, your kingship is the best thing that could ever happen to me. Or you have the option of turning and rejecting Christ as indeed the king who has come down for our salvation. But, you know, we are in a much, much better situation than the Israel was in the wilderness or Israel was in our song. For we are not like Israel in the wilderness that has come out of Egypt and is now waiting to enter the promised land. We, on the other side of the cross, see Jesus who has entered the promised land on our behalf. Turn with me, if you would, to Hebrews 4. To see the end, Hebrews 4, verse 14 is what I want to look at. And this is the end of the exhortation based upon the quotation from our psalm in Hebrews. It's the end of our quotation in that we are not waiting for someone to enter the promised land. For us, Christ has entered it on our behalf. Verse 14 says, Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, He's passed through the heavens, the idea that he's gone into the promised land. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, with our sufferings, with our sins, with our trials. But we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may find mercy and find grace to help us in time of need. And turn over one page to chapter 6, verse 19. Chapter 6, verse 19, where it says, We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf and has become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. All the reasons for faith in Psalm 95 are found in our Emmanuel. For Jesus, indeed, is God with us. He is the great King whose presence brings the kingdom. He is our maker and redeemer who has saved us from our sins, has made his own special people. He is the true shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He is the high priest who has entered into the promised land on our behalf. We are called to submit and to obey, to worship and rejoice in Christ Jesus, our great King, to believe that God is with us in and through our Savior, Jesus Christ, no matter what the world, the flesh, or the devil would tell us to the contrary. In light of such unseen truths, our psalm calls us as the people of God today, as it did then, in verse 1, to come, sing for joy to the Lord, shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. We are to realize that Christ is the great king over all and that no God, no king, no element of nature is his peer. In faith, we need to see that all that would tell us that Christ does not reign is completely under his dominion. We should choose the path of blessedness and not the path of perishing. Even as verse 6 says, come, bow down and worship. We are to kneel before the Lord, our God, our maker, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Choose Christ's kingship in faith. Say that his kingship indeed is the best thing that could ever happen to us. Hold fast the confession for our faith and our hope is not anchored in our circumstances. circumstances. It is anchored in Christ's priestly work, which has satisfied God. As Hebrews 4 puts it, seeing that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. Amen. Shall we pray? Our Father, we realize that you indeed are our God and our King and we realize that that kingship is a privilege to us. We realize that we on our own have no rights to this covenant. No rights to your kingship or at least the good side of your kingship and your shepherding care. On our own your kingship would only bring judgment and wrath. But through Christ you have made us into your people. You have washed away our filth. You have washed away our daily rebellion. And you have clothed us with the righteousness, the perfection, the obedience of one who has pleased you so thoroughly that we now can approach the throne of grace with boldness in time of need. Lord, strengthen us in our faith that we may apprehend this great anchor for the soul. In Christ's name, amen.